(a) Technical Field
The present invention relates to a door hinge; and, more particularly, to a compatible door hinge for vehicles which imposes no restriction on the degree of freedom in design of a door skin.
(b) Description of the Related Art
Generally, door checkers used for vehicle doors enable a vehicle door to open in stages, and door hinges support the weight of the vehicle door and act as the center of rotation when the vehicle door opens or closes.
The door hinges typically have a simple structure with a small number of parts and are an example of representative common use parts in that they can be applied to any vehicle door regardless of the kinds of doors. For instance, a door hinge includes a side plate which is fixed to a door panel, a body plate which is fixed to a vehicle body panel, and a hinge pin which integrates the side plate with the body plate and acts as the center of rotation of the door.
Particularly, the structure of the side plate of the door hinge has effects both on ensuring a rotation gap for a door opening trajectory and on the design of the door skin. Therefore, the side plate of the door hinge is important with regard to the compatibility of the door hinge.
For this, the side plate of the door hinge is designed in a form in which any one of upper and lower portions of the side plate based on a hinge shaft is bent inward so as to minimize effects on the design of the door skin in which upper and lower portions thereof are reduced in width compared to a medial portion thereof having a relatively large width.
However, the side plate of the door hinge has a single body structure with the hinge shaft as the center thereof. Thus, two factors, i.e., an increase of the degree of freedom in design of the door skin and the compatibility of the door hinge may conflict with each other.
If the degree of freedom in design of the door skin is increased, a modification in design and shape of the side plate of the door hinge may be required, in other words, the compatibility of the door hinge is reduced. On the other hand, to ensure the compatibility of the door hinge, the degree of freedom in design of the door skin must be markedly reduced because of a limited shape of the side plate of the door hinge and a limited position adjustment distance within which the installation position of the door hinge can be changed.